Montgomery decided to take charge of his overall health and fitness, detailing to the Washington Post how he completely overhauled his nutrition and started working out to shed his extra weight. During his career, Montgomery was able to bench nearly 500lbs and squat around 700lbs, calling himself an “extreme meathead”. But once his football career was over, he realized that he didn’t need to be as big anymore.

“Sometimes I still don’t recognize myself,” Montgomery said to the Washington Post. “Now I’m kind of almost out of that fat club. Now I’m in the skinny club. It’s almost hard to imagine that I even had this NFL career. That’s basically a time warp.”

Here’s a look at Montgomery now, compared to when he was playing for the Redskins back in 2012 (In the Instagram photo, Montgomery is on the left):

L: Larry French/Getty Images, R: Instagram/willmontynfl

The first major step for Montgomery was overhauling his diet and nutrition. Montgomery told the Post that he immersed himself in nutritional podcasts, diet books, and healthy lifestyle articles, while also researching paleo and gluten-free programs.

Here are a few changes Montgomery made: “He replaced his morning toast with oatmeal, his afternoon granola bars with fruit or nuts. He started cooking with coconut oil. He cut down on sugars, stopped eating pasta and bread, switched out beer in favor of red wine, experimented with probiotics and Himalayan pink salt, and sought out grass-fed meat and free-range eggs.”

Training-wise, Montgomery stayed away from the heavy lifting that was a staple of his routine during his NFL years. Instead, Montgomery started doing more pullups, cranked out more pushups, and jumped rope—pushing his weight loss even further.

Eventually, he settled in at 225lbs.

“If you see a 300-lb dude with a goatee who looks like he can bench 500, I think you look at somebody like that differently than a clean-shaven, 225-lb guy,” Montgomery said. “I’m not scary anymore. Now I’m just a guy.”

Looking to overhaul your nutrition or workout program to lose weight? Here are some tips, workouts, exercise, and diet plans from Men’s Fitness to help you out: